Rebecca McGowan could be forgiven for thinking she has already come through her toughest test as she prepares to make her long-awaited Olympic debut in Paris next month.
The 24-year-old Scot edged double bronze medallist and three-time world champion Bianca Cook to the women’s +73kg slot at the end of another gruelling and emotional taekwondo selection process.
For Cook, who had set her heart on a final shot at the one major medal to still elude her, it meant heartbreak to rank alongside that of her husband, Aaron Cook, who was controversially overlooked in favour of Lutalo Muhammad for the London 2012 Games.
But McGowan’s surge to prominence, which included two world medals – a bronze in 2022 in Guadalajara and silver in Baku the following year – meant that ultimately there was less cause to question the choice.
And while McGowan is understandably wary of raking over the pair’s long-standing heavyweight rivalry, she believes the high-level competition will stand her in good stead to go on and achieve something that agonisingly eluded Cook.
“I think I overcame my biggest battle just by getting to the Paris Olympics,” McGowan, who was part of the training squad that travelled to Tokyo with the team in 2021, told the PA news agency.
“I’ve had my hardest fights and I’ve got through them. If we didn’t have that level of competition (in the GB gym) we wouldn’t have that drive and determination. Everyone in the gym is constantly pushing each other to be better.”
McGowan credits her ascendancy during the abridged three-year cycle since Tokyo to the inspiration she gleaned from being up close and personal in the Japanese capital, where Cook fell to a narrow semi-final defeat and had to rouse herself to win a bronze medal for the second straight Games.
“Tokyo was a fire that was lit inside me,” McGowan added. “I guess I’d accepted that it wasn’t going to be my Games, but when I was out there I told myself I’d done the hard part, and I was not going to go through the same thing again in Paris.
“I’ve had multiple injuries in this cycle, including an operation on my hip, but despite knowing how tough it was going to be to get there, I believed in myself and with the right mindset I knew I could keep striving for more.”
McGowan, who grew up in Dumbarton and is the first Scottish athlete to compete in taekwondo at the Olympics, said she had been inspired to follow in the footsteps of the domestic sport’s standard bearer, Sarah Stevenson, and Serbian double Olympic champion Milica Mandic, whom McGowan beat to clinch her breakthrough European crown in 2021.
“I’ve got early memories of watching Sarah then Milica winning the heavyweight title in 2012, and I watched that and thought, ‘I want to be the heavyweight Olympic champion’ – that’s what my dream was,” added McGowan, the partner of fellow GB qualifier and Tokyo silver medallist Bradly Sinden.
“I’ve a good relationship with Milica, which is crazy – 12-year-old me would never have believed it. Just like I’ve been inspired by her, it’s nice to inspire the younger generation in Scotland, and give them someone who has been where they are, to look up to.”